Restaurant review: Italian delights at Waltham's Ristorante Gemelli

In a city packed with top-notch Italian restaurants, diners will be hard-pressed to a find an Italian eatery that combines quality and affordability better than Ristorante Gemelli.

By Bob Tremblay

In a city packed with top-notch Italian restaurants, diners will be hard-pressed to a find an Italian eatery that combines quality and affordability better than Ristorante Gemelli.

My wife, Beverly, and I have dined at the Waltham restaurant three times and our dining companions have eaten there more than a dozen times. Every meal has been a winner. Not one meal has been accompanied by sticker shock.

There's no deep, dark secret to Gemelli's culinary success. Homemade food, a talented chef, an experienced owner, intelligent portions, comfortable surroundings, unobtrusive service. What's not to like? Diners coming from the city center will just have to venture farther up Moody Street - Waltham's restaurant row - to find the restaurant. It's located closer to the Newton border than Main Street.

Gemelli was originally located in Arlington, opening in 2002. Needing more space, it moved to Waltham last year, setting up shop in the former confines of Ritcey's Seafood Kitchen. A complete renovation ensued.

The restaurant is co-owned by the husband-and-wife team of John and Iledna Gemelli. A native of Brazil, who previously worked as a manager and cook at an Italian restaurant in Boston, Iledna does the cooking. A 30-year veteran in restaurant service sales and consulting and owner of six restaurants in the 1970s and 1980s, John handles the restaurant's administrative side.

His family has a long cooking tradition - his maternal grandmother, Vincenzina, was born in northern Italy, and his father, Giovanni, was born in Messina, Sicily - and their recipes have been passed down to Iledna. The couple discovered new dishes during a trip to Italy where they studied at the Culinary Institute of Florence.

The interior of Gemelli is cozy and intimate, nothing flashy. Sculptures and paintings are the dominant decorations. Italian music plays in the background. The eatery's bar seats seven. A refrigerated case at the entrance contains desserts for takeout.

When we meet our guests, a wicker basket filled with large slices of fresh bread has arrived on the table. For dipping purposes, it comes accompanied by a plate of olive oil containing pesto and an olive tapenade as flavor enhancers. The bread displays a firm crust and chewy interior. The combination is delicious, but beware! Created in a two-day process by a baker in Woburn and made to order, this bread is irresistible and addictive.

For appetizers, our guests split an order of toasted ravioli - six jumbo cheese ravioli dipped in egg batter, tossed in bread crumbs, toasted and served with a marinara sauce ($6.95). These ravioli are indeed jumbo, and more importantly they're scrumptious.

``(Expletive deleted), these are good!'' raved one of our guests. ``The texture is right - the raviolis are crispy but not too crispy. The filling is cheesy and creamy and melts in your mouth. They're perfect.''

His companion, meanwhile, praised the sauce. ``It's thick and fresh and has just the right amount of sweetness versus tanginess,'' she said. ``It's the best marinara sauce I've ever had in my life.''

Beverly ordered the soup of the day, which during our visit was the chicken noodle soup ($4.25). ``It's fresh, it's hot, it soothes the soul,'' she said. She also appreciated the thick noodles, thick broth and plentiful pieces of chicken. Carrots, celery and parsley completed the equation.

I selected the baked mushrooms, which came stuffed with sweet Italian sausage ($7.95). Based on a family recipe, the dish takes 20 minutes to prepare. The seven mushrooms were loaded with the tasty stuffing. The mushrooms were slightly overcooked, however, and thus were a tad rubbery. I had to use my knife to cut them. Bev boosted the flavor quotient by adding lemon.

For entrees, one of our guests chose the gnocchi al pollo - potato dumplings with chicken, capers, fresh plum tomatoes and garlic in a light cream sauce ($13.99). He asked our waitress for no capers and the request was honored. ``The texture is perfect for the gnocchi,'' said the guest. ``Not too firm, not too soft. The chicken is perfect, too. Everything is perfect.''

His companion ordered the pasta platter - ravioli, gnocchi and tortellini in a cream tomato sauce ($12.95). The pasta was cooked flawlessly, she said, and the delicate sauce sublimely seasoned. ``The flavor bursts in your mouth,'' she said. This sauce is truly wondrous.

Bev selected the vitello francese - veal, capers and shallots sauteed in a lemon butter sauce ($15.99). ``Lots of onions, tender meat, generous portion, really nice,'' she said, noting that the veal was also breaded. The dish typically comes with pasta, but Bev had it substituted with creamy, fresh spinach.

I ordered the gamberi scampi - sauteed shrimp in a lemon butter sauce served over linguine ($14.99). The seven shrimp exhibited a pronounced lemon flavor rather than the mamby-pamby taste I've experienced with this dish far too frequently. The shrimp were fresh - there's that word again - and tender. The chunks of tomatoes were appreciated, too. The pasta was also delectable.

For dessert, we shared the white chocolate twist - rich chocolate cake, white chocolate mousse and silky butter cream, decorated with white and chocolate chips ($4.95). This was the only dish we ordered that wasn't homemade. It comes from a bakery in Medford and it was delicious, though it did have that just-thawed feel. For the record, half of Gemelli's desserts are imported from Italy.

The presentation for all the dishes was attractive.

In previous visits, we have ordered the pizza, which is spectacular, so make sure someone in your party gets one. Take note, on Sundays and Thursdays, diners receive a small cheese pizza free when they order any large specialty pizza.

The pizza at Gemelli comes from a brick oven and is served in traditional Neapolitan style. That means thin crust. Anyone who thinks all pizza dough and all pizza sauces are the same should visit Gemelli and have John explain the effort that goes into making the pizzas at his restaurant. It's a science, and science never tasted so good.

``It's a treat to find an Italian restaurant that knows what it's doing,'' said one of our guests.

Yours truly concurs. This is the kind of Italian cuisine, combining innovative and traditional elements, that diners typically find in the North End. Except at Ristorante Gemelli, the prices are lower, the parking is easier and, for MetroWest diners, the commute is shorter.

In other words, it's better.
Bob Tremblay can be reached at btremblay@cnc.com or 508-626-4409.

RISTORANTE GEMELLI
Address: 560 Moody St., Waltham
Phone number: 781-893-0025
Web address: www.ristorantegemelli.com
Service: Attentive but not overbearing
Worth it?: Yes. Our meal for four including drinks, tax and a generous tip was $122.
Dinner prices: Appetizers $2.75 to $8.95, soups and salads $4.25 to $9.95, pasta $8.99 to $15.99, grilled dishes (steak tips, chicken and salmon) $10.99 to $13.99, veal dishes $14.99 to $18.99, chicken dishes $12.99 to $16.99, specialty pizzas $10.95 to $14.95 and desserts $4.95 to $5.95. Pizzas can be made as calzones. Customers can also create their own pizzas with a variety of toppings.
Particulars: The restaurant is open Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Parking is available on the street and in lots off Moody Street. Reservations are accepted. The restaurant is handicapped accessible.
Miscellaneous: Gemelli offers takeout and delivers to Waltham and parts of Watertown and Newton using its own drivers.
The restaurant has a beer and wine license and is waiting for city approval to serve cordials. ``This could happen in the fall,'' said John Gemelli.

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